Beamcaster's optical links offer high throughput but require line of sight.

A new product called Beamcaster distributes beams of light to create wireless networks, providing an alternative or supplement to Wi-Fi and eliminating much of the cabling used to connect office workers to the Internet and corporate networks.

RiT Wireless, the makers of Beamcaster, demonstrated the technology this week at the Interop networking conference in Las Vegas. A Beamcaster "optical distribution unit" is mounted on a ceiling, distributing invisible beams of light to eight "smart outlets." (You might call them "frickin' laser beams.") In a typical setup, the smart outlets could be placed on top of a cubicle wall and hook up to PCs via Ethernet, giving workers access to the Internet and corporate networks. Connecting those smart outlets to standard switches would increase the number of PCs each smart outlet could connect to.

This setup reveals an obvious limitation—smartphones and tablets typically don't have Ethernet ports. However, a Beamcaster smart outlet can connect to a Wi-Fi router, distributing the signal to Wi-Fi-capable devices. Future versions of the smart outlet will have 802.11ac Wi-Fi built in, RiT Wireless CTO Erez Ben Eshay told me at the Beamcaster booth yesterday.

Beamcaster will be available in a few months, starting at $7,000 for the optical distribution unit and eight smart outlets. Ben Eshay acknowledges that it costs more than Wi-Fi access points, but he says it's cheaper than buying a switch and cabling infrastructure. The $7,000 unit provides 1Gbps of bandwidth, Ben Eshay said, but he prefers to think of it as 2Gbps because "it's a true bidirectional link at the same time." A unit costing $8,000 will provide a 10Gbps network (presumably 5Gbps each way).

Beamcaster is being sold through channel partners, and orders are expected to ship in July. Ben Eshay said a 100Gbps version will come later for about $12,000, but he didn't say when. He was quick to say that the network is limited only by the speed of light.

Who will buy it? RiT says Beamcaster will be useful "wherever high connectivity and easy installation are required, from offices to trade show booths, educational, and medical facilities." On a trade show floor, certainly, there would be advantages to setting up your own optical network instead of sharing the conference's Wi-Fi with other users. Whether it's worth the expense is another matter. In an office building where the network is devoted to just one set of users, Wi-Fi is often perfectly fine.

Ben Eshay claimed the optical wireless network is more robust than Wi-Fi because it has fewer problems related to users and devices sharing bandwidth. Still, he acknowledged that the 2Gbps or 10Gbps throughput amounts are hard limits, shared among devices connected to a Beamcaster network. A browser-based management tool will let administrators control how much bandwidth is allocated to each smart outlet.

RiT Wireless does engage in some scaremongering in a white paper on its website, claiming businesses should be worried about "the potential risk of radiation" from Wi-Fi. Beamcaster also claims that it has better security than Wi-Fi, going so far as to say that it is "100% unhackable."

While Beamcaster could well avoid some of the hacks that plague Wi-Fi networks, any "unhackable" claim is hard to believe. As PayPal's top security official, Michael Barrett, said today, "There is no such thing as a fully secure system." Each system has different degrees of risk, but there is risk in every system nonetheless, he said. (Barrett was discussing a new authentication system; he wasn't talking about Beamcaster specifically.)

In any case, Beamcaster says it uses "hack-proof optical links" and that "Every device (mobile or other) connected to the network has to be authorized, so [it] cannot authorize another ‘outlet’, reinforcing security." Tampering with the beams causes them to immediately shut down, Ben Eshay said.

While RiT Wireless believes Wi-Fi isn't as good as its beams of light, Wi-Fi is well accepted in the business world and is evolving to provide the kind of bandwidth Beamcaster promises. The new 802.11ad standard can provide up to 7Gbps of throughput on the 60Ghz band, with the same kinds of high-bandwidth, short-range communications as Beamcaster.

Connecting to the network

Beamcaster's optical distribution unit itself connects to a company's backend network via fiber. This setup requires a lot less cabling than traditional wired networks, RiT argues. "Upgrading of network infrastructure involves high costs and much downtime in order to install the new cabling and infrastructure," the company writes. "Upgrading... from 100Mps to GE [Gigabit Ethernet] entails more than just replacing ports and switches in the wiring closet. It involves much time and expense to deploy the cables and requires extensive management once installed."

Extending an organization's bandwidth long distances is also easier with Beamcaster, Ben Eshay said. "A copper cable can run 330 feet before it needs to see a switch. This unit can run 40 miles," he said, referring to the fiber connection from the data center to the office.

Once the signal is distributed via those light beams, it requires line-of-sight connections. This will be OK for workers in cubicles but not for their bosses in offices with actual doors.

More distribution units and smart outlets would be needed in those offices to get them connected through an optical link, although they could connect via Wi-Fi.

The beams are designed to travel up to 18 feet to a smart outlet, resulting in coverage of a 1,400-square-foot area. Distances could be increased if Beamcaster raised the power levels of its signal, but the levels were deliberately kept low for safety reasons. "The Beamcaster operates outside of the visible spectrum using very low power and is fully certified as a Class 1 laser product, safe under all conditions of normal use," the product website states. The beams are 2 millimeters wide and use about 20 microwatts of power, Ben Eshay said.

During setup, visible red beams are used to help humans create the point-to-point connections between the Beamcaster optical distribution unit and the smart outlets. Then it switches to the low power, invisible beams to distribute the actual network signals.

The receivers are designed to be extremely sensitive in order to pick up the low power signals. RiT has a patent pending on its technology.

If you're hungry for a little more, here's a marketing video the company made:

Basically this is for people setting up a cube farm who don't want to run a wired network but also have too many people for Wi-Fi. While it is true that running conduit is expensive, most people just run the cables underneath the cubes. 18 feet of CAT 6 and a switch is a hell of a lot cheaper than $7,000.

I have to wonder how much your signal is going to suck when someone opens a window and the sun shines in.

Say I use a half-duplex connection to download file over a 1Mbps link. In one second. I have to send a small amount of traffic up the stream to confirm reception, but that's a small amount (say less than 10% of the total data coming down.) So the total amount of data downloaded in a 1 minute session is around 54 megabits.

Beamcaster's optical distribution unit itself connects to a company's backend network via fiber. This setup requires a lot less cabling than traditional wired networks, RiT argues. "Upgrading of network infrastructure involves high costs and much downtime in order to install the new cabling and infrastructure," the company writes. "Upgrading... from 100Mps to GE [Gigabit Ethernet] entails more than just replacing ports and switches in the wiring closet. It involves much time and expense to deploy the cables and requires extensive management once installed."

Extending an organization's bandwidth long distances is also easier with Beamcaster, Erez said. "A copper cable can run 330 feet before it needs to see a switch. This unit can run 40 miles," he said, referring to the fiber connection from the data center to the office.

You could get all of these benefits with a gigabit ethernet-fiber optic bridge that costs a few hundred dollars instead of several thousand. Except in a large convention center where running wires isn't feasible, this doesn't seem to offer any real improvements over existing technology.

97 Reader Comments

I've had an idea for something like this for a while. Good to see someone's jumping on it. I suppose a snarky way of getting people out of the way of the signal is to have the system yell at people or shoot airsoft BBs at them when they break the beam or open the shades. It'd be great YouTube material.

Any reason to choose Beamcaster over 60 GHz WiGig solution with beamforming?

This doesn't make any sense, your not comparing apples to lasers....

Mind pointing out what I'm missing? What can Beamcaster do that the other can't? Only thing I can think of off the top of my head is if the user wants communication to be cut off when blocking the beam. However, even in that case, you could achieve the similar thing with 60 GHz by handicapping the beamforming, although you would need a bigger obstruction.

Beamcaster's optical distribution unit itself connects to a company's backend network via fiber. This setup requires a lot less cabling than traditional wired networks, RiT argues. "Upgrading of network infrastructure involves high costs and much downtime in order to install the new cabling and infrastructure," the company writes. "Upgrading... from 100Mps to GE [Gigabit Ethernet] entails more than just replacing ports and switches in the wiring closet. It involves much time and expense to deploy the cables and requires extensive management once installed."

Extending an organization's bandwidth long distances is also easier with Beamcaster, Erez said. "A copper cable can run 330 feet before it needs to see a switch. This unit can run 40 miles," he said, referring to the fiber connection from the data center to the office.

You could get all of these benefits with a gigabit ethernet-fiber optic bridge that costs a few hundred dollars instead of several thousand. Except in a large convention center where running wires isn't feasible, this doesn't seem to offer any real improvements over existing technology.

I've read all the comments and still can't come up with a use scenario that wouldn't be better served by Cat6 & and cheap switch. And this technology is coming to market just as 802.11ac is arriving. But mostly, I don't see a use case.

If the range was longer, say 200 feet, you could make a case for wiring the outdoors, or special events, or some such where running wires is more difficult.

12K for the 100Gb unit. Pity the 100Gb switch that you'll need behind it to actually PROVIDE that bandwidth is going to run you 6 or 7 figures. Oh, and don't forget the INSANELY EXPENSIVE fiber you have to run from that switch to the unit.

It seems like LOS issues might be solved by using neutrinos instead of photons. I wonder how hard it would be to build a neutrino transceiver the size of current wifi hardware.

That is about impossible to do, given the nature of neutrinos. Below are three people inside of a neutrino detector, and IIRC, very few are even detected. And there are millions of those little guys going through our bodies every seconds, so I imagine "outside" interference would be a huge problem.

That is about impossible to do, given the nature of neutrinos. Below are three people inside of a neutrino detector, and IIRC, very few are even detected. And there are millions of those little guys going through our bodies every seconds, so I imagine "outside" interference would be a huge problem.

If the range was longer, say 200 feet, you could make a case for wiring the outdoors, or special events, or some such where running wires is more difficult.

The basic technology we're talking about is called "FSOC", for free space optical communication. It does have applications outdoors. The use cases I'm familiar with include setting up high bandwidth private networks between buildings, linking cell phone towers, and augmenting military radio systems. Obviously these are very different systems from what is described here, because they have to deal with much longer ranges (e.g. to the horizon) and compensate for atmospheric turbulence and weather. But using these systems you can build links where you can't reasonably lay cable, and can often outperform comparable radios. (Disclosure: I work for a company that has ties to this industry.)

We would never advertise something as 'unhackable' but one can honestly state that FSOC has 'low probability of detection / low probability of interception' meaning that an adversary is not even going to know you're there, let alone be able to eavesdrop on you, unless they are in the relatively narrow laser beam.

Another selling point (one of the few that could apply to an indoor system like this) is that you don't have to worry about using RF spectrum or about dealing with RF interference. Radio spectrum is expensive and congested (whether you're talking about wifi or war zones).

It strikes me that one of the better uses for this tech would be as a way to tie multiple buildings together. In many cases, it could replace the multiple fiber links required to run to different buildings. (running copper is a really bad idea because of the ground-loop problem.)

And if someone had a tower, for instance, you could create a neighborhood network, or by using two towers, haul a signal a long damn way without needing a microwave relay (which require licensed technicians, and are very expensive.)

I am, however, not nearly interested enough to wade through their video to see if the unit is weatherized. It doesn't look that way. If not, I think they're missing one of their only actual markets.

First of all, you still need switching infrastructure to light up the base-station. Then you will quickly need management systems for the base stations and sub-stations. It will end up so much more expensive than wi-fi.

This thing is so strange. Also that 100% unhackable claim just makes me think the whole thing is a troll.

Seems good for specific moments but, not a fan. Why are we cutting shortcuts to actually improve the long standing bottleneck that "1Gbps Ethernet" is on? Nobody can afford enterprise infiniband or fiber here, and this is a major bottleneck in local consumer networking. I personally would prefer to sweat, drill holes and get under basements to lay glorious CAT cable than wireless, which is only great for laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc...

They might want to lower that "100%" text in their YouTube video stillshot because the play button blocks the 10 so it looks like it says "0% unhackable links" which could throw some people off and not even click on it and never investigate the product ever again. Extreme I know, but hey, there's some weirdos out there. Inform the marketing dept.! But seriously this thing wouldn't be bad if you didn't need all those little receptacles scattered all over the office. Plus what if your on your lunch break or somethin and gaming it up or downloading something at your desk and someone decides to be a jerk and wave their hand in front of one of the little bugger's lines of sight? You're just screwed with no defense? Wireless is only good up to a certain point.

Can two smart outlets be aligned to extend a cable. I see no reason why not, they are transceivers. Then interesting things can be done like shoot it between sky scrapers, to the neighbors house, to the detached garage, etc.

1. Quickly setting up a new location, like at a convention where it's mounted way above everything, and running cables will be a bitch. This will enable several things; one being that more convention centers (ones generally without pre-run cables) can be used for tech-heavy setups, as well as enable said setup to be way easier. Don't underestimate just how much people would like this product - Quakecon, for instance, utilizes THOUSANDS of cables going table to table, so throwing up just one of these saves hours of time for many people.

2. Wireless frequency spectrum - although this device specifically might not do it, point to point laser links may be the future of wireless ISPs (I'm talking last-mile links here). Ordinarily, these guys have to carefully manage the spectrum of what antennas they put up on their towers for what customers - i.e. customer A is on channel 3 of a 2.4ghz antenna, and you can fit a few more on channels 6 and 9, and even some in between there, but you start hurting one another's bandwidth in between there, so you start using the 5ghz antennas instead. Lasers avoid that problem for the most part, if their dispersion is low. This tech is simply a good example of it in action; in a few years, I don't doubt that further distances will be common.

<whoop whoop effect - back to when I was a small sysadmin> My users would SO love this - not! They'd refer to it as RedTomato's DeathStar. How will I explain it to them?

See this? It will hang above your heads. It shoots out laser beams. I am your sysadmin. Beware me. Do not forget your login or trouble me with idiotic questions. This will shoot beams into your eyes and blind you. Do not bump the receiver or your computer will no longer work. Do not stick your hand in the beam path or it will be vaporised in a blinding flash of light. Then I will deduct from your salary the cost of re-aligning the beam. Good luck meeting your enhanced milestones while typing with your remaining hand.

The thing looks like something the Portal Corporation would cook up. Still, if I am going to be sitting at a desk, I really do prefer a good wired connection over any kind of wireless, any day of the week. This may be a solution in search of a problem.

Basically this is for people setting up a cube farm who don't want to run a wired network but also have too many people for Wi-Fi. While it is true that running conduit is expensive, most people just run the cables underneath the cubes. 18 feet of CAT 6 and a switch is a hell of a lot cheaper than $7,000.

I have to wonder how much your signal is going to suck when someone opens a window and the sun shines in.

Not to mention that his "2" and "10" GbE are "hard limits".Its closer to a hub in its functionality for connectivity distribution as the limit is shared at the device, not per channel.Sure I can designate which channels get which speed, and it is still a switch in the sense that it must still perform the duties of a switch (Interface specific MAC/IP associations), but it seems strangely planted somewhere between the two worlds.

And for 40cents/foot, I'd much rather run the cable that can get me 330 feet from the switch, as opposed to 18feet from the switch.

Line-of-Sight point-to-point stuff is supposed to be a backhaul replacement, not an end-point replacement!

I could see this working beautifully in areas such as trade shows or other areas that are modular with a high line of sight ceiling without many obstructions. As I read the articule though and attempted to imagine using this in our cubicle areas, I would much rather just upgrade the switch and cabling. Yeah this is great with your current setup, but what happens if you would decide to upgrade the cubicles with higher walls? And as the article said, what about the higher ups walled in offices on the periphery?

But more than that, think about this...You still need the cabling infrastructure in the cubes itself, you may still need switches, and you will definitely still need the fiber line(s) running back to the central switch. You are just saving yourself from running cabling down the walls and through the flooring (or dropping down from the ceiling like we do). So...i'm kinda meh for an office area. Perhaps college classrooms? You could wire the tables and have the receive mounted in the middle or end of every table.

Seems like a refresh of the old infrared networking implementation of yore (maybe a decade or so ago), admittedly with a lot more bandwidth. But, man, $7000 will buy you a *lot* of Ethernet, this technology doesn't make dollars and sense.

"Erez acknowledges that it costs more than Wi-Fi access points, but he says it's cheaper than buying a switch and cabling infrastructure."

That's quite the understatement on his part. But, I don't see this as a fix for cabling infrastructure. At least not anymore than existing WiFi.

Did you miss the unhackable part? Sniffing out WiFi is as simple as placing an antenna close enough to the source. With the laser you need line of sight. Also, once quantum encryption is ready (not sure what the progress is on that) since this thing is a laser it should be able to do that.

I used to work in a place that had to provide emergency IT resources to areas impacted by natural or other disasters. We had go-packs of laptops, servers printers, etc ready to go, and would typically setup 15-20 stations at a library, gym, firehouse, circus tent, etc. If internet access is flaky or too slow, they would even provide some applications on local, temporary servers.

This would be a great tool for that application -- once you have a real disaster hit, all sorts of people show up -- FEMA, police, national guard, state emergency management, various other government agencies and even private insurance companies.

What happens very quickly is the wifi gets real crappy, real quick. Something like this would be a great way to ensure that

The 18 foot limit is going to be a serious problem for convention center type deployments. Most convention centers have very tall ceilings, so you'll be forced to lower this thing down on a pole or something. According to the article, the limit is due to needing to run the lasers way way down on power so you can look directly at them without going blind, which means upping the power is probably not feasible. This just seems to be a product that is looking for a niche.

I can see some limited benefits depending on how long range it is and sensitive to disruption. If you need a long distance LOS link, it could be huge. Say I need to run a network over to a building 300ft away, but laying cable is either not possible, or just damned expensive. This could be a cheaper way of linking long distance connections at very high speeds. Of course that depends on rain and susceptability to disruption. If some light rain is suddenly going to knock this completely out, it is no good for out doors point-to-point links. If it can stand up to heavy rain and blizzard conditions with nothing worse than a decrease in bandwidth, even a heavy one (say maintaining at least 10-20% speeds) then this could be really viable. Especially if it had a range of, say, a quarter mile or so.

Beyond that, I don't see the use for anything beyond something like in a big convention center. At that you could probably just rig some highly directional Wifi antennas and get your P2P links that way. Albeit at lower speeds.

Use cases for this are very low. Especially use cases that would be more cost effective. Maybe at the 10GbE speeds for the thousand bucks more it would have a lot more bang for the buck. The overall network infrastructure of my house is maybe up to around $250 at this point and that includes 7 GbE LAN drops plus an "smart managed" 16 ports switch and two Wifi routers. By the time I am done it'll be up around 14 LAN drops plus probably fiber out to my shed/workshop (switch has SFP modules and I'd rather bury 100ft of fiber than 10ft of conductive Cat6, shielded and grounded or not) as well as another Wifi router (in the shed/workshop). Total cost...supposing I don't upgrade my 3500L routers to something a lot better (and 802.11ac capable) is probably going to be around $400. For everything. For 14 full GbE capable duplex links, an SFP/Fiber GbE link and 3 Wifi routers with 300Mbps 2.4Ghz coverage of my entire property and house (and workshop). Not something you could do with this nifty device(s)...and even if you could, more links, more total throughput and roughly 1/15th the cost.

Opps, never mind. I just caught the 18ft figure. A product in search of a problem so it seems.

Unless there is something causing heavy interference and/or heavy partitions you are vastly better off with Wifi. No people accidently walking through the beam nor other issues.

Also...how is 18ft LOS 1,400sq-ft of coverage? Last I checked that was 1,017sq-ft. Based on the coverage of my 2 Wifi routers between the mainfloor and basement plus coverage outdoors...my two Wifi routers are covering about 25,000sq-ft of my 44,600sq-ft property (a bit more than half of the total property has coverage, 100% of the inside of the house has good to excellent coverage).

This would be a good idea at ~10x the range, ~10% of the price, with a switch built into each "smart outlet", an RJ-45 connection at the hub for gigE connectivity, and double the number of transceivers at the hub. Otherwise, it's overpriced and under-capable. For the tiny footprint it covers and its fantastic cost, it loses badly to gigabit ethernet in all but the most mobile bleeding-edge operations that need to setup within hours in random spaces, aren't there for so long that running cables makes sense, yet need better security/signal reliability than wi-fi.

About the only solid example I can think of would be pop-up field offices in a disaster area where the added security vs wi-fi (insurance, medical records) is arguably required. Conventions have the setup time, predictable layout, and control over their booth to set up wired connections. Normal offices have the fixed layout to run ethernet. Outdoor events will typically need far more range than this offers ... and if they don't, they're well within the range of what ethernet can easily do.